YALE AGRICULTURAL LECTURES. 77 



well as the expenditures often made in the cause of agriculture 

 by wealthy gentlemen and commoners. 



In a general view of " English agriculture," then, if there 

 were not practical lessons afforded for immediate imitation, a 

 pervading influence could not but be felt throughout, calculated 

 to lead our farmers to a more intelligent appreciation of their 

 calling and its duties. The first cause of its advancement was 

 undoubtedly the abundance of wealth and the compact popula 

 tion of the island. Next came the national taste to turn this 

 wealth into rural channels, and thirdly, a necessity for enlarged 

 production, which had directed both wealth and t-iste to prac 

 tical objects. Up to a period within forty years, the object 

 in view by English agriculturists had been to reclaim waste 

 lands. A Committee of the House of Commons, in 1797, after 

 protracted investigations, calculated the area thus brought un 

 der inclosure during the eighteenth century at about 4,000,000 

 acres ; and under the impulse of war prices from 1800 to 1820, 

 there are statistics to show that 3,000,000 acres more were 

 added to the dominion of the plow. Then came a falling off; 

 comparatively little has since been done in this direction, and, 

 since 1840 particularly, the aim of English agriculture has been, 

 not to enlarge the productive average of the island, but to in 

 crease its acreable production. 



Some of the agencies by which this had been partially, and 

 was constantly being more fully accomplished, he hoped to 

 illustrate before concluding. Previously he alluded briefly, in 

 the fourth place, to the three classes engaged more or less 

 directly in English agriculture the proprietors, the tenantry, 

 and the laborers. "England and Scotland," wrote Philip 

 Pusey, so long the editor of the Royal Agricultural Society's 

 Journal, " are the only countries with a class of cultivators 

 possessing sufficient capital to stock farms of a good size at 

 their own risk, paying a certain yearly sum to the proprietor." 

 In fact, the farming capital, other than the ownership of the 

 land, is almost wholly in the hands of the tenants, and, in many 



